7 votes
Accepted

Is having a keyword appear twice in the URL good?

First off, please stop thinking in terms of keywords. I assure you that Google does not match keywords. The process is far more sophisticated than simply seeing if a term exists. In fact, term matches ...
closetnoc's user avatar
  • 32.8k
5 votes
Accepted

what is the meaning and use case of each URL encoding Reserved Characters

What does each of this characters mean in context of an URI? Note that a URI consists of several different "contexts" or parts. eg. the scheme, host, URL-path, query string and fragment ...
MrWhite's user avatar
  • 42.7k
5 votes

Does using onclick to redirect parameters impact SEO?

Based on Links Crawable Guidelines, the link will be crawled as https://www.example.com/, because Google can not follow link from onclick attributes. Google search central says: Google can follow ...
Muhammad Dyas Yaskur's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Using robots.txt to block sessionID URLs

you should exclude such urls from crawling, because you spend your whole crawling budget for those useless urls. Read this topic at Google Product Forum. set the robots rule like: disallow: /*...
Evgeniy's user avatar
  • 10.1k
4 votes

Strange URL parameter in Google search result, looks like an advertisement

Your site has likely been hacked and a malicious script inserted to add spam-advertising. The script may show one result to the Google bot and other results to humans. You should contact your hosting ...
JCL1178's user avatar
  • 5,582
4 votes
Accepted

Can keywords in the URL path be separated by commas for Google?

Browser will encode input, according to the character-set used in your page. I personally avoid , in url structure, because of encoding. It's %2C. So your url would be like /url=keyword1%2Ckeyword2....
Josip Ivic's user avatar
  • 3,888
4 votes

How do real estate websites like Zillow host pages for every address in their database?

As with any other page detection in Google it is done through linking. Zillow doesn't host every single address as a page rather it is being done using a single page template and a database of ...
Chris Rutherfurd's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

“Invented” URL parameters

If there's no legitimate content at those URLs, just return a 404 status. That's what it's for. You may also want to include a rel=canonical link in your script's HTML output, to make sure that any ...
Ilmari Karonen's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

URL Parameters in the new Google Search Console?

This feature is not yet available in the new Search Console. However, you can continue to use it in the old Search Console. Setting up URL parameters still affects your site even it can't be done ...
Stephen Ostermiller's user avatar
4 votes

How to redirect a URL and remove parameters using .htaccess?

To redirect the exact URL as stated you will need to use mod_rewrite (ie. RewriteRule and RewriteCond directives) since only mod_rewrite is able to match the query string part of the URL (ie. ...
MrWhite's user avatar
  • 42.7k
4 votes
Accepted

What to do with unwanted URL parameters?

Use a canonical tag The best option is usually to use a canonical tag to tell search engines that the preferred URL doesn't have those URL parameters. This handles the duplicate content issues ...
Stephen Ostermiller's user avatar
4 votes

Do URLs that only consist of an id, for example, a timestamp, have a chance to succeed in SEO?

I always lean towards descriptive urls. They are easier for the users to understand. They are easier to maintain. And they have a tiny bit of impact on ranking. Google : URL structure best practices ...
Rohit Gupta's user avatar
  • 2,231
3 votes

Can keywords in the URL path be separated by commas for Google?

Commas are not typically used in URLs and are not recommended. You should stick to using either underscores or hyphens/dashes. That being said, Google recommends hyphens/dashes, so I would go with ...
Dynadot's user avatar
  • 757
3 votes

How to remove the old site from Google Search and reset Google Search Console after developing a new website

Primarily I see 2 core issues you are facing, 1. I receive the links for the old site that aren't valid. There are couple of ways you can go past this. Assuming, you have limited number of pages, ...
Paritosh's user avatar
  • 316
3 votes

unexpected url parameters added by 3rd party browsers

I know this is old, but after going through some server logs, I came across the same parameters and I was curious where they were from. I have found from=groupmessage, from=timeline, from=...
dmo's user avatar
  • 131
3 votes

Duplicate content due to URL parameters ('canonical' link type can’t be used)

Would adding the parameter in (google) Search Console fix those issues? Even if it did, it wouldn't help 100% because there are other search engines I'm sure your client would want his website ...
Mike -- No longer here's user avatar
3 votes

Duplicate content due to URL parameters ('canonical' link type can’t be used)

I would canoncilise the original page without the parameters to itself, which explains to google this is the original and you can ignore the rest. <link rel="canonical" href="http://domain.org/...
Switchfire's user avatar
3 votes

Writing clean urls with .htaccess

SOLVED! Thanks to you guys. Solution: # Turn Rewrite Engine On RewriteEngine on # Set the base to /games/ so we need not include it in the rules RewriteBase /games/ #Rewrite for achilles.php?...
Hulio-G's user avatar
  • 81
3 votes
Accepted

How to construct the URL for search with multiple input?

My view would be that it doesn't matter for SEO because I'd be noindexing these pages anyway. Google doesn't want to index your search results in its search results, and it's a great way to get ...
grg's user avatar
  • 3,207
3 votes

How to remove the related videos at end of YouTube embedded video?

As of September 2018 Youtube has made it impossible to remove related videos. You will always get related videos from now on.
user3658931's user avatar
3 votes
Accepted

What is the `#` symbol in a link with Google Analytics campaign tracking parameters?

If you have checked the option Set the campaign parameters in the fragment portion of the URL (not recommended) immediately under the field that gives you the completed URL, then the URL builder will ...
Bronwyn V's user avatar
  • 3,423
3 votes

Would google handle querystring parameters in a image filename as seperate images?

Putting parameters on a URL makes new URLs. Googlebot will see those two different URLs separately as separate images. Should you minimize the variants? Not necessarily. Googlebot does duplicate ...
Stephen Ostermiller's user avatar
3 votes
Accepted

Google Search Console URL Parameter Tool reports no URLs monitored

This appears to be a bug/glitch on Google's end. Many sites have had this same issue (https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/16282442). Google has also indicated that they may be deprecating the ...
Nina Dubovich's user avatar
3 votes

Does rearranging query parameters result in duplicate content?

With regards to duplicate content, as long as the correct canonical tag is set to match the original page, it should be fine. In saying that, it's definitely not optimal to have duplicate pages with ...
Richard's user avatar
  • 154
3 votes

Disallowing path with parameter

All right, I found an answer in docs for how to use robots.txt: URL matching based on path values Robots.txt Specifications This should be fine: Disallow: /Home/SomeBlockedPath
bakunet's user avatar
  • 227
2 votes
Accepted

Session ID Creating 404 Errors

Your URL is malformed, jsessionid isn't a parameter, it's being read as a route. If jsessionid, f, and r are all supposed to be parameters, your URL should look like this: example.com/category/...
Chris Searles's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

Does using the Google URL shortener add anything to utm_ tracking tags in Google Analytics?

Google's URL shortener does not have any extra features that allow cloaking of parameters after they are clicked. If anything the Google service has less features than some of the other options like ...
Drai's user avatar
  • 777
2 votes

Writing clean urls with .htaccess

I have: http://funkygames.co/games/achilles.php?games_path=achilles.swf&category_id=1 I want: http://funkygames.co/games/achilles/achilles/1 or even better: funkygames.co/games/achilles/1 (if that'...
Mike -- No longer here's user avatar
2 votes

How to correctly remove parameters from the Google index?

to remove all URLs with certain parameters from the index and not sure which setting to choose. Search console doesn't allow to remove parametrized URLs from index. It gives only some possibilities ...
Evgeniy's user avatar
  • 10.1k
2 votes

Using robots.txt to block sessionID URLs

Based on official guidelines, don't use the robots.txt file for canonicalization purposes. You can blocks sessionid URLs using Parameter Handling If you block using robots.txt, you may lose the search ...
Muhammad Dyas Yaskur's user avatar

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible